Salento, Day 3

Salento is as nice as my first impression let on. I´m staying in a hostel called The Plantation House, the only gringo hostel in the area. It´s rather pricey, but I managed to score a half-room-upstairs-attic bed for a good price on the suggestion of one of the travellers who works there. It´s such a cool room! It´s like sleeping in a tree house or in one of those old rooms in my dad´s lodge, so I´m perfectly at home there. The people coming and going are all cool, too: there are some Americans, Canadians, and a few people from France, and Tim, the guy who runs the place with his Colombian wife, is English.

Apparently Salento has been a popular weekend vacation spot for Colombians for years, and only in the last 2 years since Tim opened the hostel have there been many foreign travellers, so it´s not too touristy yet and still has the authentic South American vibe.

Yesterday some friends from the hostel and I walked an hour down a gorgeous country road, past fields of cows, tall eucalyptus trees, bunches of big bamboo trees hanging over the road, and grand views of the lush green valley below, to a couple of organic coffee farms that give little tours of their property. The first one was bigger and most of the product from their 41000 coffee plants was for export; the second was a smaller farm run by a family who only sells their coffee in the local markets. Both were really interesting, and it was neat to walk around and see all the different coffee plants and learn how they harvest the beans, clean then dry them out, roast them, sometimes grind them, and sell them. At the end of each tour we drank some of their top quality coffee and I must say that, even though I´m not a coffee drinker, that cup was mighty good. At the smaller farm we actually roasted our own beans for 20 minutes over a fire, ground them in a little grinder, and made the coffee we drank.

Today it´s been raining again so I haven´t done anything. I´m actually in Armenia to get money use the internet (much faster here), and will head back to Salento in a couple hours with Brandon, the American guy whose been working at the hostel. Tomorrow I plan to do a bit more exploring in the valley nearby, but Sunday I´ll head further north. Gotta make it to the coast soon!